Devices and method for the oil pollution control of both sea aquatorium and inland waters. The device comprises a vertical take-off and landing unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) (1) equipped with a sampler (10) configured to be moved by a small-scale lifter winch (3), the sampler (10) comprising a container with positive buoyancy (4) and equipped with a fluoropolymeric fine-meshed screen for taking samples from water surface. The method provides a surface-water sampling using the device and comprises the steps of: descending the sampler (10) onto water surface; taking a sample; ascending the sampler (10) aboard the UAV (1); and sealing the collected sample, when the sampler (10) is aboard the UAV (1).

PatentUniversity of Latvia and Riga Technical University | Date: 2017-01-25

The present invention relates to oxygen gas sensors. Oxygen gas sensor comprising a housing (5) which encompasses an active media in the form of AlN pellet (7); a light source (1) located outside the housing (5) for generating an exciting light (3); a luminescence recorder (10) located outside the housing (5) and configured to receive a luminescent light (8) from pellet (7) when it is excited by the light source (1). The light source (1) is configured to generate a light with an emission wavelength of 300 to 330 nm. The AlN pellet (7) consists of AlN nanopowder with a grain size in the range from 40 to 80 nm, preferably 60, nm and is configured to luminescent with a light of 420 nm when excited by the exciting light (3) from the light source (1).

RIBuild will strengthen the knowledge on how and under what conditions internal thermal insulation is to be implemented in historic buildings, without compromising their architectural and cultural values, with an acceptable safety level against deterioration and collapse of heavy external wall structures. The general objective of RIBuild is to develop effective, comprehensive decision guidelines to optimise the design and implementation of internal thermal insulation in historic buildings across the EU. RIBuild focuses on heavy external walls made of stone, brick and timber framing, as most historic buildings are made of these materials. The general objective is achieved through three main activities
To obtain a thorough knowledge level to characterise the eligibility of the building for a deep internal thermal insulation renovation. This knowledge is obtained through screening of historic buildings, investigation of material properties and threshold values for failure
To determine the conditions under which different internal insulation measures are reliable and affordable measures based on probabilistic modelling of the hygrothermal performance, the environmental impact and the cost/benefit
To develop a set of comprehensive decision guidelines, which are demonstrated in a number of buildings. RIBuild addresses the most difficult retrofitting measure of historic buildings: internal thermal insulation. The adaption of knowledge developed by RIBuild contributes to sustainable historic buildings with improved energy efficiency implying an easier conversion of energy supply from inefficient fossil fuels to efficient renewable energy sources. RIBuild also assesses the hygrothermal performance of the building construction, thus no collateral damage occurs; in case of failure an easy roll back of the measures is possible. The guidelines developed in RIBuild strongly support the deep and holistic retrofitting approach which historic buildings face in the coming years.

ETNA2020 is a 48-month Coordination and Support Action with the overall aim of facilitating trans-national co-operation among NCPs for Smart, Green and Integrated Transport, identifying and sharing good practices, and raising the general standard of the support to programme applicants across the EU and globally. To reach the objective above, the project will develop five main activity axes, corresponding to the projects specific objectives: 1)raise understanding of EU Transport R&I landscape; 2)capacity building of NCPs; 3)upgrade the set of tools for NCP assistance; 4)strengthen the participation of relevant stakeholders to Horizon 2020 funding opportunities; 5)support networking opportunities within the Smart, Green and Integrated Transport constituency. Cross-cutting activities of dissemination and communication will addup to this main set of activities, helping to enhance their impact. ETNA2020 is the continuation and evolution of the precedent network, ETNA Plus, whose results and lessons learnt have been taken into consideration with the logic of improving the future network and in order to valorize the networks strengths. ETNA2020 will also take into account the paradigmatic change brought by Horizon 2020. This will be reflected in ETNA2020 activities, and, in particular, in a stronger attention of the network in terms of multidisciplinary competences, consideration of related societal challenges, and linkage with other EU relevant initiatives, funding programmes and policies. Finally, the network will seek further opening to a wider target of stakeholders and businesses in the Transport field. ETNA2020 consortium comprises 16 beneficiaries, with a good mix of well-experienced and less experienced NCPs coming from Member States and Associated Countries. Besides beneficiaries, the project services will be offered to all officially appointed H2020 Transport NCPs, who will be involved as Associated partners.

Embedded systems are the key innovation driver to improve almost all mechatronic products with cheaper and even new functionalities. Furthermore, they strongly support todays information society as inter-system communication enabler.
Consequently boundaries of application domains are alleviated and ad-hoc connections and interoperability play an increasing role. At the same time, multi-core and many-core computing platforms are becoming available on the market and provide a breakthrough for system (and application) integration.
A major industrial challenge arises facing (cost) efficient integration of different applications with different levels of safety and security on a single computing platform in an open context.
The objective of the EMC project (Embedded multi-core systems for mixed criticality applications in dynamic and changeable real-time environments) is to foster these changes through an innovative and sustainable service-oriented architecture approach for mixed criticality applications in dynamic and changeable real-time environments.
The EMC2 project focuses on the industrialization of European research outcomes and builds on the results of previous ARTEMIS, European and National projects. It provides the paradigm shift to a new and sustainable system architecture which is suitable to handle open dynamic systems.
EMC is part of the European Embedded Systems industry strategy to maintain its leading edge position by providing solutions for:
. Dynamic Adaptability in Open Systems
. Utilization of expensive system features only as Service-on-Demand in order to reduce the overall system cost.
. Handling of mixed criticality applications under real-time conditions
. Scalability and utmost flexibility
. Full scale deployment and management of integrated tool chains, through the entire lifecycle
Approved by ARTEMIS-JU on 12/12/2013 for EoN.
Minor mistakes and typos corrected by the Coordinator, finally approved by ARTEMIS-JU on 24/01/2014.
Amendment 1 changes approved by ECSEL-JU on 31/03/2015.

Following the EC SET-Plan Education and Training Roadmap, the concept of this proposal is to develop a joint PhD programme between universities and research centres, on the topic of Thermal Energy Storage (TES). The goal of INPATH-TES is to create a network of universities and research institutes to implement a joint PhD programme on TES technologies. The final result of such a network is to educate professionals on these technologies for the European research and industry institutions. The consortium includes 14 universities that will implement the joint PhD programme, two research institutions (AIT and PROMES-CNRS), three companies and two SME (Arcelik, Abengoa Solar NT, KIC InnoEnergy, UFP and LAIF), that will cooperate in defining the programme and in its implementation and deployment. The specific objectives of the project will lead to the qualification of professionals for the European research and industry institutions, bringing Europe to continue being leaders in these technologies. The partners in the proposal will be the core of a future larger network of excellent R&D institutions, and industries for co-funding and industrial placement, sharing infrastructure capacities, and enhancing mobility of students. The overall approach of the project involves a work plan divided in six work packages, being either coordination or support activities. Coordination activities: WP1 Management and coordination; WP3 Developing, maintaining and updating a PhD programme in TES; and WP4 Implementation of the PhD programme in TES. Support activities: WP2 External communication and dissemination; WP5 Stakeholder involvement and extension of partnerships; and WP6 Framework for monitoring and evaluation of INPATH-TES as well as IPR and regulatory issues.

Deep renovation the idea of capturing the full economic energy efficiency potential of existing buildings with focus on building envelopes leads to remarkable energy savings. As nearly all of Latvias stock of multifamily residential buildings continues to rapidly deteriorate due to harsh weather conditions and lack of proper maintenance, the idea is attractive.
Realizing this potential requires designing, financing and implementing complex energy efficiency investments, but today nearly all apartments in Latvia are privately owned. Practice shows that individual owners are inadequately organized to manage their collective property. Combined with a lack of awareness and technical knowledge, limited availability of funding, high risk perception and reluctance for debt financing, the barriers overwhelm most people.
A concept that addresses these constraints is Energy Performance Contracting (EPC). A key feature of EPC is that the provider, an energy service company (ESCO), guarantees energy savings.
SUNShINE supports public and private ESCOs and leads to an innovative investment scheme with a pipeline of projects worth 30m, guaranteed savings over 26GWh/year, and 202020m2 of deeply renovated buildings. A major objective is to demonstrate the financial viability of deep renovation via suitable financial engineering of public funds and private capitals.
The proposed approach is simple, yet very innovative: most ESCOs have limited balance sheet capacity and are not able to support much long term debt. So re-financing is usually achieved by selling future cash flows (receivables) by a forfaiting transaction. After this transaction the ESCO continues to guarantee energy savings for the entire EPC term (15-20 years). Unfortunately, in emerging EPC markets like Latvia, there are not enough track records, so banks are not yet ready to offer these services to ESCOs. The project delivers the same service by establishing a special purpose fund for EPC.

SEREN3 is a 36-month Coordination and Support Action with the overall aim of facilitating trans-national co-operation among NCPs for Secure Societies, identifying and sharing good practices, and raising the general standard of the support to programme applicants across the EU, Associated and Third countries. To reach the objective above, the project will develop three main activity axes, corresponding to the projects specific objectives: 1) capacity building of NCPs; 2) strengthening the participation of relevant stakeholders to Horizon 2020 funding opportunities; 3) and supporting networking opportunities within the Secure Societies constituency. Cross-cutting activities of dissemination and communication will addup to this main set of activities, helping to enhance their impact.
SEREN3 is the continuation and evolution of the precedent network, SEREN2, whose results and lessons learnt have been taken into consideration with the logic of improving the future network and in order to valorize the networks strengths. SEREN3 will also take into account the paradigmatic change brought by Horizon 2020. This will be reflected in particular in a stronger attention of the network in terms of multidisciplinary competences, consideration of related societal challenges, and linkage with other EU relevant initiatives, funding programmes and policies. Finally, the network will seek further opening to a wider target of stakeholders and businesses in the Secure Societies field.
SEREN3 consortium comprises 17 beneficiaries, with a good mix of well-experienced and less experienced NCPs, and representing Member States, Associated Countries and Third Countries. Besides beneficiaries, the project services will be offered to all officially appointed H2020 Secure Societies NCPs, who will be involved as associated partners.

National Contact Points (NCPs) for Space provide support on Space funding under EU Framework programmes. In 2007 under FP7 the EU started funding an NCP Space network which was named COSMOS. This enabled the NCPs to benefit from each others experience and thus raise the level of the overall quality of their services. Additional services were established like a joint website and news service providing information about Space and EU Framework Programme related topics. Furthermore they organised international information days in support of the European Commission with emphasis on bringing potential project partners together. Last but not least they implemented a country independent helpdesk for EU framework Space research related questions. While the project partners are core of the network the full group comprises the other Space NCPs from EU member states and Associated Countries as well as Space contact points in international partner countries, mainly from Space faring nations.
Within COSMOS2020 the network activities are continued under Horizon 2020. Capacity building, information services, project partner search support and more activities will once again reinforce the cooperation of the NCPs and raise the overall quality level of services. This is even more important since their role as only official support entity was decided for Horizon 2020.

RealValue aims to demonstrate how local small-scale energy storage, optimised with advanced ICT, could bring benefits to market participants throughout the EU. Smart Electric Thermal Storage (SETS) will be deployed in physical demonstration trials in 1250 homes in Germany, Latvia and Ireland but the analysis will also consider other storage technologies and energy vectors, including integration with district heating and micro-generation. SETS is a direct replacement for existing electric thermal storage heaters and water tanks with a combined load of 55GW across the EU. It can also replace direct electric resistance heaters with further connected load of 93GW. To validate the physical demonstrations at large scale RealValue will use modelling & virtual simulation to demonstrate the technical and commercial potential in millions of homes across representative EU regions. Thorough research studies are an integral part of RealValue and will include techno-economic and behavioural analysis that will be used to inform EU regulation and policy decision makers. RealValue will develop business models which quantify the potential of small-scale storage as an aggregated controllable load. It will provide system services or release value through price arbitrage within existing energy market structures, and highlight any barriers associated with integration into the electricity grid. The RealValue consortium is a truly cohesive partnership which has full participation and commitment from the whole energy supply chain. The consortium includes: technology developers (Glen Dimplex, Intel); energy system modelling specialists (UCD, DIW, RTU); energy market specialists (VTT); socio-economic experts (Oxford University); electricity network operators (ESBN, EirGrid) and energy utilities (MVV, SSE). RealValue is designed to accelerate innovation and develop business models necessary for small-scale storage, allowing it to form an integral part of the future EU energy landscape.